Innocence Abashed
by musefatale
Summary: Snape Gen. Written in 2006.


Innocence Abashed

A small boy just barely fourteen hovered in a corner and watched his father kill his mother. It was no curse, no spell gone awry. It was simply murder. Her blood spilled on the hardwood floor that she always kept spotless, as blood dripped in steady droplets from the knife in his father's hand. His older brother had stood by and watched while his younger brother has his head buried firmly in the boy's shoulder. No one moved or spoke as their father dropped the knife to the floor with a hollow thud and turned to leave the room.

"Clean this up, Severus." His father said to him, beckoning the two other boys to his side and shutting the door behind him.

Severus crawled from the corner over to where his mother's lifeless body lay sprawled on the kitchen floor. The palm of his tiny hand landed in her still warm blood and he lifted it, looking at the crimson dripping from his fingertips back to the floor. He crawled on his hands and knees as close to his mother as he could be, staring down at her with pain ripping through his being. Tears swelled and stung in his eyes and bile caught in his throat and he fumbled for the wand in his pocket. His wand rolled from his hand under the wooden cabinets that surrounded the granet-topped island in the middle of the room.

Severus had to lie on his stomach in the centre of the pool of blood that surrounded his mother to retrieve the wand he so desperately needed to rid himself of the gruesome scene laid out before him. The taste of his mother's lost life simmered in the back of his throat like gasoline fumes, and he tried to choke them back, gagging and vomiting over the floor. He gripped his wand tightly in his hand and sat back on his knees, holding his stomach with his free hand and trying not to dry-heave because of the smell of blood and bile.

He flicked his wrist, all that was left of the scene was his mother's pale body, and her chestnut brown hair fanned out around her. Then the tears burst from his eyes. Severus shed hot, angry tears over his mothers porcelain face as he collapsed on her body, his arms wrapping around her in a futile attempt to being her back to life. He cursed the fates for dealing her this hand in life. It all had begun so well, his parents were in love so deeply until their first son was born. He was a wizard. Severus' father never knew about her magic background. He never knew. Three more times he tried to get a son who was not "flawed". This last son had died with her.

Severus hated his father. Hated what he had always done to his mother. Hated everything about the man from the piercing black eyes that he's handed down to his middle living son to the broken nose that Severus had endured when he was twelve when his father had hit him so hard he it wasn't until three hours later that he woke up in a pool of his own blood. The only reason he had not acted out his rage before now was some stupid reason, his mother loved his father and was eternally trying to make him love her again.

There was no one here to keep him from acting now...

He snuck up the stairs from the kitchen to the second floor where a long hallway led down to the room where his oldest brother was still sitting up doing the last bit of work that the seventh-years had over their Christmas break. Severus walked silently down the hall and stepped into the small room inhabited by his brother. He stepped behind his brother and drove the knife that their father had used to kill their mother into his back. He did not even have time to scream, but instead fell from his chair into a heap.

Severus turned and left the room and walked into his own, where his little brother was sleeping soundly, engulfed in a nightmare. Severus kneeled next to his brother's bed and whispered softly to him.

"Don't worry... it'll all be over soon and you'll be back in mummy's arms with brother and the daddy that you never knew." Severus said, taking the knife and slitting his brother's throat.

In a haze, Severus walked back down the stairs and into the den where his father bent over a desk writing furiously. More than likely, he was putting the final touches on his mother's forged will and filling out the final few papers to send the three boys far, far away.

Severus dropped the knife to the floor. This time it made a loud clang and his father turned and stared at him.

"What the fuck are you doing here, boy?" Severus' father cursed in a loud, harsh voice.

Severus reached into his pocket and gripped his wand tightly. He pulled it from his pocket and pointed it at his father's head.

"AVEDA KADEVERA!" He shouted. A harsh green bolt of energy emitted from his wand and his father crumpled onto the floor. It was the perfect death for a man who was well known for his hatred of magic.

Severus walked into the kitchen, pulled his mother into the den, and laid her out next to his husband. He went upstairs, picked up his baby brother, and carried him down, laying him in his mother's arms. He made one last trip upstairs to pick up his older brother and drug him into the stairs, laying him on the other side of their father. They looked like the perfect family photo, all together, their eyes closed and their faces white and pale. Snape cast his wand down on top of his father's chest, left the house, going back out into the woodshed behind the house, and took the gasoline, dowsing the perimeter of the house and soaking the dead bodies in the den. He struck a match on his father's shoe and dropped it, taking another and taking it outside, lighting the outside of the house and standing back to watch it burn until the flames grew too hot. It was then that he ran down the snow-covered path in his bare feet towards the winter house of the Malfoy's.

He knocked on the Malfoy's front door, shivering, and sure that his legs up to his knees were frostbitten. The door opened and Mrs. Malfoy looked down at Severus.

"Oh dear, darling! Get in here quick! What are you doing outside in this weather in just your socks?" She asked as she hurried him towards the large fireplace in their living room.

"My house caught on fire and I couldn't wake mum or dad, and they're still in there, and I can't find my wand... and I was so scared Mrs. Malfoy!" He gushed, fake tears pouring down his cheeks.

"Oh dear, I'll have Mr. Malfoy go and see if there's anything to do about it, I'm so sorry dear, I am so sorry." Mrs. Malfoy said, holding him close to her. "But dear, it's two in the morning, why don't you run on up to Lucius' room, he's home for the week. We can do nothing. But I'll take you to Diagon Alley tomorrow and get you a new wand, alright?"

Severus nodded and threw his wet socks into the fireplace. He looked down at his red toes and hurried up three flights of stairs to Lucius' bedroom. He pushed open the door and stuck his head in. Lucius was staring out the window towards the house ablaze in the distance.

"So you finally did it." Lucius said, turning his head so his silky blonde hair fell over his back.

Severus nodded and walked into the dark room towards the much older boy.

"I'm so proud of you, my little one. And what are you going to tell everyone when they find out what spell you used?" He asked.

Severus looked down at Lucius' mark on his left arm. "I'll tell them that he did it."


End file.
